BARRIE, ONT. -- Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital pediatrician Dr. Sarah Barker discusses administering the COVID-19 vaccine to children and how kids are affected by the virus with CTV's Craig Momney.

Q - The Pfizer vaccine has been approved for children 12 and up, and now Moderna is saying its shot is safe for children as well. What are your thoughts?

A - I'm very excited about this. To tell you the truth, my own two, 12-year-old and 16-year-old, got their vaccine yesterday. We were signed up as soon as we could and got on a standby list. So, I fully support it, and I'm very excited that kids can start getting back to the things that kids should be doing.

Q - Is there any evidence that the vaccines could have any effects on fertility or even breastfeeding?

A - No, I've been asked that question before and certainly not. You have to think of the vaccine; it actually doesn't introduce the virus itself. It's basically like an email being sent to your immune system, kind of showing what the virus looks like and then teaching it how to destroy it and then, like a Snapchat, it disappears.

Q - When it comes to the COVID-19 virus, in patients who have tested positive, what are you seeing when that patient is a child?

A - To tell you the truth, I really haven't seen many children with COVID itself, because as you know, children don't get as sick as adults. I've actually only admitted one child with COVID. There have been many children who I think, 'maybe they have COVID,' we have to treat them as if they might have COVID, but fortunately, they haven't.

Even the one child that I looked after who had COVID, they weren't that sick; they were basically like any child with a cold who had asthma.

Q - Are there any concerns from parents about the COVID-19 virus?

A - You know, there's a lot of fear about the virus. People who are very scared about the virus are patients who have other health conditions like asthma, diabetes, cancer have even more fears, and they ask about the safety of their children and whether they can do certain things.

Fortunately, you know, pediatrics has been very lucky in this regard because the kids do not get sick for the most part. There are some which is why vaccinations are important.

But again, they tolerate it pretty well, and even kids who have other conditions, COVID for them doesn't change things any more than, let's say, a common cold which can exacerbate things like asthma. H1N1 influenza was much worse for our population, and so we've been lucky in this respect.

Complete information on Simcoe Muskoka's vaccination program is available here.